DIANNE: [wry smile] Oddly enough, you aren’t the first person to ask me that.
SHELDON: [laughs] In your books, gifted ones and Immortal Guardians have thrived in medieval romance, time-travel romance, paranormal romance, and now sci-fi romance. Are there any other romance subgenres you’d like to immerse them in?
DIANNE: There is one that comes to mind that really intrigues me. But I doubt I’ll ever do it because it would dramatically and irrevocably alter the world of the Immortal Guardians, and—as I mentioned—I’m really enjoying it as it is.
SHELDON: What subgenre is it?
DIANNE: [smiles] I’m going to leave you guessing on that one.
SHELDON: Of course you are. Well, I’m starting to get texts from fans demanding I wrap it up and let you get back to writing… my book.
DIANNE: Nice try. It isn’t yours.
SHELDON: [whispers] Damn it. [smiles and shrugs] Oh well. Can’t blame a guy for trying. Thanks for the interview, Dianne.
DIANNE: You’re welcome, Sheldon. Have a good one.
SHELDON: You, too.
My Immortal Guardians family has grown by leaps and bounds since I launched the series with Roland and Sarah’s book. David’s table now sports several new leaves and is getting very long. LOL. Long enough that I started making seating charts for the meetings that took place in his home to ensure I would always know exactly where everyone sat even if some of the characters didn’t speak.
Since my Immortal Guardians are always doing crazy things in my head, they’re constantly reminding me of their gifts, so I have little difficulty keeping track of them. But I know some of you who don’t live with them and have them yammering in your ears every day may sometimes have trouble remembering who can do what. So I thought I would provide you with a list. I opted to start with the couples and arranged them in the order in which they fell in love, so you’ll find immortal elders and newbies mingling throughout it. Those who are still single follow the couples. And I included some of the mortal gifted ones as well.
As you know, most of these characters appear in multiple books. So when I list a book under a character’s name, I’m referring to the book in which he or she found love and happily ever after. “Special Appearances” refers to books they have appeared in outside the Immortal Guardians series.
BOOK: Darkness Dawns
BIRTHPLACE: Eleventh-century England
GIFTS: He can heal wounds and illnesses with a touch of his hands. If he heals too many wounds or pushes his gift too far, those wounds will manifest themselves on his own body. He was also born with telekinetic abilities that weren’t strong enough to utilize much until those abilities strengthened in Death of Darkness. Roland also acquired the ability to shape-shift and to teleport in Seth’s book.
SPECIAL APPEARANCES: A Sorceress of His Own (The Gifted Ones: Book 1) and The Lasaran (Aldebarian Alliance: Book 1)
BOOK: Darkness Dawns
BIRTHPLACE: Houston, Texas, United States
GIFT: She has prophetic dreams but doesn’t realize it until Seth helps her learn how to decipher them.
OCCUPATION: Music professor… until she transforms. Now she kicks vampire ass.
BOOK: Night Reigns
BIRTHPLACE: Twelfth-century England
GIFT: He can see ghosts or spirits and can also communicate with them if he so desires. He rarely does though, as you learned in Phantom Embrace, because such usually has unpleasant consequences.
SPECIAL APPEARANCES: Marcus was a mortal teenaged squire in A Sorceress of His Own (The Gifted Ones: Book 1) and also in Rendezvous with Yesterday (The Gifted Ones: Book 2), in which he had a larger role. He also later made an appearance as an Immortal Guardian in The Lasaran (Aldebarian Alliance: Book 1)
aka Ami
Though she isn’t immortal, she has special abilities, so I’m including her in the list.
BOOK: Night Reigns
BIRTHPLACE: Lasara (a planet in a distant solar system)
GIFTS: She’s telepathic, but rarely listens to other people’s thoughts because it’s considered rude on Lasara, where most are telepathic. She also can sense the unique energy signature every man, woman, and child possesses and can use it to track them like a homing beacon. Though it isn’t a gift, I thought I would mention that she ages very slowly. Lasarans have been known to live up to a thousand years.
SPECIAL APPEARANCES: The Lasaran (Aldebarian Alliance: Book 1)
aka BASTIEN, the black sheep of the Immortal Guardians family
BOOK: Phantom Shadows
BIRTHPLACE: Eighteenth-century England
GIFT: He has empathic abilities that allow him to read or feel others’ emotions with a touch, something Melanie really wishes he had told her sooner.
SPECIAL APPEARANCES: The Lasaran (Aldebarian Alliance: Book 1)
BOOK: Phantom Shadows
BIRTHPLACE: Washington DC, United States
GIFT: She has minor precognitive abilities. She reaches for the phone, for example, before it rings. And when she tells Bastien, “I’m starting to get that feeling,” he knows something serious is about to go down.
OCCUPATION: She’s one of the head researchers at network headquarters and works hands-on with the vampires housed there as she searches for a cure for the vampiric virus as well as a way to halt or reverse the brain damage it causes in humans.
SPECIAL APPEARANCES: The Lasaran (Aldebarian Alliance: Book 1)
BOOK: In Still Darkness
BIRTHPLACE: Eighteenth-century France
GIFT: He can teleport. Sheldon might also add stalking to Richart’s list of gifts. He likes to razz Richart about secretly watching over Jenna after their initial meeting.
BOOK: In Still Darkness
BIRTHPLACE: United States
GIFT: She’s a descendant of a powerful healer *cough* Roland *cough* and never got sick before her transformation (she never so much as caught a cold), something she doesn’t really consider a gift but I think the rest of us nevertheless envy.
BOOK: Darkness Rises
BIRTHPLACE: Eighteenth-century France
GIFT: He has telepathic abilities and can read others’ thoughts. He isn’t nearly as circumspect as Ami is and—like Lisette—frequently peeks into his friends’ minds. Because he’s one of the younger immortals, he doesn’t have as much control over his gift as elder telepaths do, so when he sleeps near other people, he sometimes inadvertently finds himself drawn into their dreams.
BOOK: Darkness Rises
BIRTHPLACE: United States
GIFT: She can see auras, something she thought pretty useless aside from warning her to steer clear when someone was in a bad mood. Then she realized that vampires’ auras move before they do, allowing her to anticipate their preternaturally quick strikes and giving her enough of an edge to become the only mortal vampire hunter in history to live to tell the tale.
A late addition to the Immortal Guardians crew, who is also classified as an Other
BOOK: Night Unbound
BIRTHPLACE: Unspecified, but like Seth, he is thousands of years old and has lived long enough to have witnessed biblical events.